


the cold that drives you out (the warmth that invites you in)

by erce3



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-25
Updated: 2015-12-25
Packaged: 2018-05-09 08:56:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,972
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5533856
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/erce3/pseuds/erce3
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It’s been six months since the miracle that allowed Lavender Brown to live; it’s been six months since Parvati Patil has felt human. </p><p>It’s a story about a war, about best friends, about growing up.</p><p>(It’s a love story, it’s an afterthought.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	the cold that drives you out (the warmth that invites you in)

**Author's Note:**

> This was written for raxacoricofallapotato.tumblr.com for Secret Santa! I hope you enjoy it, Nina!

You haven’t seen her in six months, but you can still hear her voice when you read her letters. (Except for the most recent one. You wonder if it’s tired, or maybe it’s like fingernails on chalk, something that makes you cringe because it sounds so painful, maybe she sounds like Professor Remus does–did.)

You’re surprised you just forgive her and promise to visit, because finally you’re allowed to, just because finally you can see her. (You’re still angry she wrote to Ron Weasley first. Ron Weasley!)

You’re not a full person, yet, not after the war, but something in her letter reminds you of what it’s like.

(What it’s like to be okay. What it’s like to know everything is going to be okay, to know that it’s over, it’s over.)

Somehow, the person who you spent the majority of the war holding hands with, protecting, is the person you think will lead you out of it.

You set the newest letter down and owl for Padma, just for some sort of comfort, or something.

/

Of course you don’t send her a letter at first. It takes you months to look at yourself in the mirror without crying, and even more to learn not to scratch at your scars. (You remember your professor in third year, you wonder how he did it.)

Every month, you lock yourself up and in a bundle of self-hatred and anger, you become someone else.

The moon is always bright.

(You hate the moon, hate what it’s made you.)

She always loved the moon, said it reminded her of home. Parvati, your best friend. The person that knows–knew–you the most.

You don’t want her to see you like this, but somehow, it feels worse without her.

(You wonder if she’ll still kiss your lips, now that they’re not soft.)

/

It takes a week for you to respond, which is stupid, because it’s just Lavender, but it isn’t, not anymore. She’s the girl who hid from you for sixth months, she’s the girl who you kissed before the last battle, she’s the girl who you thought you couldn’t live without.

Maybe you couldn’t, maybe the last six months were you dealing, not living. Coping.

Padma makes you respond, anyways. “I’m not,” she says, when she arrives, “letting you stay lifeless.”

“I didn’t even know about it until Hermione Granger told me,” you say, almost dream-like. You’ve done your best to forget, but then again, here you are, thinking about Lavender Brown. “She thought she was going to die.”

“Well,” says Padma, “she hasn’t.” She crosses the room and holds you delicately, like you’re fragile, like you’re glass.

(You aren’t glass. You’re stone. The only way to hurt you is to split you open, but even you haven’t figured out how to do that.) 

(Except, Lavender just has.)

/

Hermione comes in some days, sits down and fills you in. Gives you the tabloids, rolls her eyes when you snatch them greedily.

(You never say anything.)

Your voice is hoarse when you try it to the mirror on month three. Hermione catches you chattering an old poem, one you memorized in fifth grade. (One you recited to Parvati when she couldn’t sleep. One you whisper to yourself after the full moon.)

“I like that poem,” says Hermione, softly, because everything everyone does around you is soft, like there’s a beast in your stomach they don’t want to wake. (They’re not wrong.)

“I hated you in fifth year,” you say, with a voice so quiet Hermione has to lean in to hear, turning around to face her. 

“Oh,” says Hermione, frowning faintly, probably disappointed that these are the first words you have said to her (to anyone, really).

“It seems so far away now, fifth year. Par--” you stop yourself, the name catching in your throat. (It’ll take you two more months to be able to say it fully.) “She and I used to whisper about our future, about who would be successful, about what would happen next. We wanted to learn French, live in Paris, or maybe go to New York. It seems so silly now. The war just mangled everyone.”

“Oh,” says Hermione again. “Oh.”

You don’t speak again for another week.

/

You want to wear heels that click, your bold red shirt, your dark hair in a tight bun and lips pursed. “Don’t,” says Padma, when she sees you. Padma, in an old shirt, in some dirty jeans, drawing. “You’re not dressing to scare anyone. You’re dressing to meet your best friend.”

“I’m not,” you say indignantly, but Padma is right, you are dressing to intimidate (that’s the only way you feel brave anymore), so you let yourself be led back to her room.

You end up with duller colors, just as uptight but less terrifying, somehow.

“The way you looked,” Padma says afterwards, so quietly you almost don’t hear her, “looked like you’d been Crucioed again, like back in seventh year, terrifyingly blank.”

(Some days, it feels the same way, but you don’t tell her that.)

You smile at her. “It’s okay.” (It isn’t.)

She escorts you to Mungo’s, despite your (empty) promise.

“It’ll be okay,” Padma says, before you leave to see Lavender, and it somehow feels like an edit to your promise, not her own.

/

There’s a knock on the door and you’re slow to open it. (Seven years, you think, seven years of a uniform, waiting to wear normal clothes, and now you’re out of Hogwarts, it hardly matters.)

(You still wish you were wearing something to compliment your dark skin, your curves, just to impress her.)

“Hi,” she says when she comes in, and there’s something about her eyes that feels wrong.

You pad over to your bed and pat the space beside you. “Sit.”

She doesn’t. “I… missed you.”

(I was too busy caught up in self hatred to miss you. I was too ashamed of what you’d think.)

“I did, too,” you lie.

Parvati looks uncomfortably at your lips, then back to your eyes. Like they’re somehow different from the ones she pressed her thumb over, like their scars and nicks have made them strangers.

(She’s seen a thousand boys kiss these lips, you think.)

(She’s kissed them herself.)

“God,” she finally says, letting out a shaky laugh, “I spent seven years as your roommate, as your best friend, and somehow, it feels like I don’t know you.”

(She’s always been blunt.)

“Yeah,” you say. “I don’t even know myself, anymore.”

“Have you talked to Ron, much?” Parvati bites her lip in that way she does when she’s angry, but doesn’t want anyone to know about it.

“Sorry,” you say, and she looks surprised (of course I still remember, you want to shout, we were best friends for seven years, Par!), “I wanted to reach out to someone, but I wanted to make it a person that I wasn’t too afraid of losing. So, Ronald Weasley.” (There’s another reason, about his brother, but you can’t bear to bring the word to your lips, can’t even think it.)

“He’s marrying Hermione, you know,” she says softly. “I couldn’t believe it.”

(It sounds so normal for her to say that, like you’re just going to go back to normal.)

“I heard,” you say. “Hermione visited me a lot. She saved me, you know.”

“I know,” she says. “She told me. She thought–” She cuts herself off, quickly, fearfully, like she’s trying to step around hot coals.

“That I was going to die.”

“Yeah. That.”

(You wonder where her bravery is. The Parvati you knew would have jumped onto those coals five minutes ago.)

“You’re a Gryffindor, Par. Say it.”

“I missed you,” she says, but there’s no meaning behind it, and you finally realize what’s wrong with her eyes.

(They’re too hard. They have no emotion. They’re just brown stones in sockets.)

You finally realize the war didn’t just leave you mangled, didn’t just toss you aside like a rag doll.

She leaves before you can tell her.

/

You want to call yourself a coward for fleeing, you want to feel guilty.

(You can’t).

Her mouth is a hard gash, her eyes are broken, like she’s sick.

You lock yourself in your room and stare blankly at the wall.

(You want to cry, you want to–)

An ugly laugh bubbles from your throat, then a sob.

“Par,” you whisper between ugly, disgusted laughs that mold into sobs until Padma uses alohomora on the door and takes you into her arms.

“Oh, Parvati,” she whispers, and you remember that she’s just as broken as you, that she knows your pain because she went (is going?) through the same thing. “You still love her, don’t you?”

“She called me Par, like she used to.”

/

You stare at the wall for three days.

It takes you three, terrible, awful days to wake up inside, before you take your nurse by the wrist. (It terrifies her, and good, it should, she should be terrified of you.)

“I want to call Parvati Patil.”

(You want to beg her to have you back, you want to kiss her silly. You want her to fix you.)

“Please.” You say it as an afterthought, just as she rushes out the door.

A sleepy Parvati is on the line five minutes later. 

/

“In third year, we had a professor, Remus Lupin.” Lavender’s voice is clear, just like it used to be, when you’d call each other over the summer.

(You smile in spite of yourself.)

“Yeah?”

“He was a werewolf. He died.”

You don’t know what to say, how it’s possible to say what you want to. (That you avoided his baby, afterwards, because the thought reminded you of her. That–)

“Parvati. Whatever you think you’re doing, stop it, please.”

There’s a pause. You take your time to squeak out an “okay.”

“I miss you, Parvati.”

“I’m right here.” 

“No, you aren’t.” There’s another long, terrible silence, where you just listen to Lavender’s soft breathing, like you’re waiting for a punchline. “Call me again when you are.”

And then the phone beeps, and Lavender is gone, for the second time in the past year.

/

You decide to have lunch with Professor Trelawney, who drains her tea and makes up something mystical.

It doesn't feel as real as it did in Hogwarts, where you wanted a future so badly–where a future was tangible–anything felt like it meant something.

Now it feels cheesy. (You don't believe in futures anymore.)

Afterwards, you thank her, and she gives you a hug. 

“Say hello to Lavender,” she says.

(I'm trying, you think.)

Parma is waiting for you when you get home. “This is stupid, Parvati,” she tells you, like she has for the past month. “Just go talk to her. There's nothing left of Lavender, either.”

You shrug. “I've been too empty for too long.”

(She doesn't argue with that.)

/

Occasionally you see Neville, who says he’s dropped by to see his parents and wanted to pop in.

He tells you he's had lunch with Parvati three times in the past month, and every time her laugh was the same–cold and hollow.

You pretend you aren't disappointed.

/

You meet Hermione Granger at work. She’s been giving you looks and sighs all week (all month, maybe).

“You and Lavender… This isn't how it should end,” she says. “You were in my dorm, I remember you'd talk and talk and talk. You can talk to her now.”

“I can't,” you say. “There's nothing left.” (Nothing left of us, nothing left of me, you want to add.)

“Ask her to help you build.”

/

You wait at the phone, wait for her, wait for someone to pick it up and dial for you.

You know Parvati’s number by heart. Sometimes, when you're distracted, you'll end up doodling the numbers on a nearby surface.

(You aren't sure what hurts more–how much you miss her, or how you know there’d be no one there, even if she picked up the phone.)

/

“This is stupid, Parvati.”

“I know.”

“Call her.” Padma watches you with a worried expression. “Or better yet, visit her.”

“I can’t–”

“Yes, you can. Stop moping and try and put yourself together–starting with her.”

“How is that putting myself together?”

Your twin smiles sadly at you.

“She’s your other half.” And then she gets up, tosses you the phone, and apparates away.

/

Parvati stands in front of you. “I–” she stops herself.

“What?” You blink up at her, unsure how she got in. (You can’t lie to yourself and say you’re upset with her sudden appearance.)

“I can't live without you,” she tries again.

Her mouth is set into a hard line. 

You run a hand over your hair. “You can't live without your best friend, not–not what I am now.”

“I could care less, Lavender. You're still you.”

“No, I'm not,” you say, but you rise to meet her. (You want to be silly, you want to be obsessed with shopping and boys again.)

(You want to take what the war has done to you and smash it into pieces.)

“And I'm not either.“

You place a hand to her cheek. (You want to kiss her you want to kiss her you wa–)

She takes the hand away, holds it to her chest with her own. “I need you.”

“I missed you,” you say, and you kiss her.

/

It takes four more months for you to kiss again. She’s out of Mungo’s, in your flat, even, and you’re drinking tea. 

You’re humming a pop song that Lavender loves, she’s going through your closet and helping “renovate” it.

It feels normal, like how you’d planned it would be, back in seventh year, back when she promised it would be okay.

“God, Par, everything in here is terrifying and so uptight! You’re like a wealthy businesswoman with no other motives except to scare your employees.” 

You shrug. “I like it.” (You like the power it gives you. You like that you don’t feel helpless anymore.)

She comes up behind you, steals your tea. “I don’t.”

She takes a sip, and you press your hand to her arm, you hold her stupidly tight. 

(I missed you, you think. I missed you I missed you I missed–)

“Par,” she says softly.

“Hey,” you say, and it sounds incredibly stupid, but she smiles.

“You remember, in fourth year, you kissed the mirror, because you thought the lipstick stain was grown-up?” you continue.

(Do you remember how I kissed you in seventh year, because I wanted to taste that lipstick?)

She rolls her eyes. “Really, I did?”

“Yeah, remember?”

She runs her tongue over her lips, over the scars and little nooks and crannies. 

“Do you remember, bringing up muggle magazines and groaning over how physically flawless all the models were?”

She’s quiet now, thinking about how stupid you both were, smiling slightly.

(Do you remember how you’d point out tops that you wanted in those magazines? How I would somehow get similar ones for you for Christmas?)

“Do you remember how Hermione Granger would just leave for the library when she couldn’t possibly listen to us talk any longer?”

(Do you remember when Ginny Weasley told us to “get a room” when we wouldn’t shut up during the war?)

“Do you remember–”

She stops you.

“Do you know, that after he attacked me, all I could think about was that I only got to kiss you once?”

You’re quiet.

“I never want to regret–”

“Stop,” you say, and you take your tea from her, and set it down on the table. 

She looks up at you, and you remember that you’re an inch taller (three with heels). You remember how many times you looked at that exact spot in the bathroom, wondering how it would feel to be that mirror, you remember wishing you did have a room together in seventh year, you remember not being able to contain your blush when she would change in front of you, you remember–

She leans in, and so do you, and her kiss is gentle, like she’s afraid of breaking you (or maybe she’s afraid of breaking herself). 

You break away, flushed. 

“I think I love you.”

“Yeah,” she says, “something like that.” 

/

You see the life in her eyes return, you see her raw and fiery, you see her become someone new, shedding the fear and anger and cold of the war, you see her hold hands and snicker with Lavender Brown.

You see the girl with scars return to herself, if older, if more mature. She looks down at your ratty clothes, at everyone's. She finds the old girl, the one that planned out every detail of her dream wedding, and she straightens her back, she grows up, she teaches her to be proud of who she’s become.

Sometimes you idly wonder if your sister would ever become herself again without Lavender.

You wonder it while you make them soup. You wonder it when you see them kissing on the train. 

There’s something right about seeing them alive, happy. They coo over baby James Sirius Potter, they watch Victoire Weasley, sometimes.

They drag you shopping, make you ask out a girl you like.

The war broke some of us, you think, watching them giggle over a magazine, over Pansy Parkinson’s hideous new sweater. (You remember you’d find Parvati just staring at the wall blankly, you remember how Hermione would complain that all Lavender would talk about was Parvati, was a future.) 

(You remember how they were nothing alone, shells of people, with ghosts of emotions.)

(You remember that they were children, little girls fighting for a future.)

(You know the war cut them down, shredded their childish hopes and dreams.) 

They just grew back stronger.


End file.
